ISE in the News

Fedscoop: The White House released President Obama’s plan for how the federal government will responsibly share and safeguard information that enhances national security on Wednesday.

The strategy, “National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding,” is built off the 2010 National Security Strategy that called for more effective integration and implementation of policies, processes, standards and technologies that promote secure and responsible national security information sharing.

IBM Business of Government Magazine: When examining the full scope of information sharing and protection, many widespread and complex challenges must be addressed and solved by multiple agencies and organizations working together. The risk of a future WikiLeaks incident can be reduced, but fixing these government-wide challenges is complex, difficult, and requires a staying commitment.

AOLGov: In tight fiscal times, federal agencies need to embrace changing technology, focus on attracting and retaining the next generation of workers and striking a balance between information sharing and security. To reach these goals, organizations need to foster a culture of trust and speed, a senior Defense Department official said.

FCW: An industry group has suggested five ways for agencies to share information in compatible formats to improve data and cooperation while saving some money too.

In a new report, the American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council argues that the government can share information seamlessly, save money, share more services, and reduce duplication. It just needs to improve its strategic acquisition and management processes by considering interoperability early in a project’s lifecycle.

Federal leaders for government-wide acquisition and information-sharing initiatives have joined forces with technology suppliers to hammer out a new set of recommendations to identify and use the government's information sharing standards and requirements. The goal of the recommendations is to enhance national security, increase efficiency and reduce costs by improving collaboration between government and industry in developing open interoperability standards and incorporating them into commercial products.

It's been more than eight years since the White House issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 requiring the issuance of secure identity cards.

While civilian agencies have been slow to put them into use, new governmentwide initiatives and a few large agencies are providing hope that the secure identity cards finally will be more than "glorified ID cards," as the Government Accountability Office said last year.

The Homeland Security Department and the IRS are among those who are finally are figuring out how to use HSPD-12 to make their agency more secure.

The Information Sharing Environment program will play an increased role in federal efforts to coordinate cybersecurity with state and local governments, said Kshemendra Paul, ISE program manager, after speaking Oct. 10 at an AFCEA-Bethesda panel. ISE officials have pushed for expansion of their program beyond counterterrorism information sharing, and cybersecurity is an area "where we're getting increasingly involved," Paul said. Other areas of potential expansion include combating transnational crime and human trafficking, he added.

Agencies aren't losing ground in the constant effort to share national security data.

And a set of technology initiatives will make secure information sharing even more straightforward in this post-WikiLeaks environment.

Kshemendra Paul, the program manager of the Information Sharing Environment, said there are five priorities the intelligence and law enforcement communities have focused on to implement secure information sharing.

Information sharing — between federal agencies, and across multiple layers of government — became an even more vital endeavor in the post-9/11 age.

The 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act sought to institutionalize best practices for broader and more robust information sharing, while at the same maintaining efforts to protect classified data.